Same with their recently announced policy on Nuclear power. They will build seven new reactors using our money. Government owned. It's odd.

In short, we simply believe in individual freedom and free enterprise; and if you share this belief, then ours is the Party for you. — Our Beliefs

Not so much, it seems.

Being one, I would know. — tim wood

Trouble is, The Liberal Party of Australia is not.

Wouldn't the liberal strategy be to reduce taxes, keep out of the market and let the consumer choose? Using "l" to distinguish the philosophy from the party.

Australian possums are cute. — frank

But they sound like daemons escaping from Hell.

Stop stirring the possum.

The answer to both is "yes". — Michael

That could have saved us a lot of time.

Is it true that there are no minds in world B?

Ok, so you tied yourself in a knot by thinking about in and at. You OK now?

In particular, since it now appears to have been the source of your considerations, do we agree that for "A world without any minds", it is true at the very least that there are no minds?

Edit: If it helps you keep on track, we can add that no one in that world can think, say, believe or otherwise have an attitude towards that proposition...

This line of discussion started from this comment of mine: — Michael

...which was in turn a reply to a comment of mine. Should I not have taken you as responding to my

For "A world without any minds", isn't it true at the very least that there are no minds?

So we have at least one truth. — Banno

??

This is quite mad.

accusing me of saying something I'm not. — Michael

As it stands, I have no clear idea of what the point you were attempting to make was. My apologies for attempting to take you seriously.

I will try not to do it again.

Then what you have been arguing for has changed; or was poorly expressed; or was trivial, all along.

A waste of time.

Your suggestion that there are truths in World B even though nothing true is being said in World B makes no sense — Michael

An yet {a} is still a member of {a,c}, even if there is no one in the world to say it.

Hence what we say is not all there is to truth and falsity. There is, in addition, what is the case - {a,c}

"truths in World B" is a misunderstanding. I think I've set out how. I don't see as I can help you any further.

Idiocy might be more comfortable with some extra cash...

Cheers, . Thanks for chiming in.

I don't see that @Michael has addressed what I had to say about the difference between the quantificational and substitutional interpretations. I did invite a re-set of the conversation in the previous page, but that didn't happen. I guess the next step is a broader discussion of the context.

The notion of "in a world" and "at a world" comes about as a result of an attempt to defend propositions against invoking Platonic forms. It's odd, something like insisting that there are propositions while denying that there are abstractions.

Here is the "easy" argument for propositions being mind-independent:

The proposition that there are rocks, which we denote <there are rocks>, does not entail the existence of any beings that have or are capable of having mental states. It entails this neither in a strictly or broadly logical sense. That is, it is possible in the broadest sense for <there are rocks> to be true in the absence of all mental states. But now, if this proposition is possibly true in the absence of mental states, then it possibly exists in the absence of all mental states, and so is mind-independent. This is an easy argument for the mind-independence of at least some propositions. — 7.1 Easy Arguments: Mind-Independence and Abstractness

But Oooo, that implies that there are propositions floating around...! And so the paraphernalia of "in a world" and "at a world" is dreamt up in order to to ward off Plato.

The alternative I offered, a few pages back, is that there are indeed propositions floating around, but that they are harmless. Extensionally, all we have are individuals, a,b,c... These we name, "a", "b","c"... Then we group them: {a,c}, {b}. Then we name the groups: f={a,c}. Then we form propositions, f(a), f(b). Here, some folk, perhaps @Michael, think that we have introduced a new thing into the world — the proposition f(a) — and so need the paraphernalia of "in a world" and "at a world" in order to avoid invoking Platonic forms.

Going over that again, "f(a)" will be true if and only if a is one of the things in the group f. This predicates truth over the faux-individual f(a). But f(a) is nothing more than a name for a group of individuals. No Platonic form has been summoned from hell.

We can happily treat f(a) as an individual, using the quantificational interpretation, but that is just a way of talking about a,b,c... It is a mistake to think that when we talk about propositions we are talking about something in addition to a,b,c..., that there is now something new in the world, the individual f(a), as well as a,b,c...

I'm only saying that truth is a property of propositions and that there are no true propositions (truths) in a world without language (i.e inside the World B circle). There are also no false propositions (falsehoods) in a world without language. — Michael

This invokes the existence of a new entity, the proposition, in the world in question. I hope that what I've set out above shows how this is an error, that {a} will be a member of {a,c} in w regardless of whether or not there is also language in w.

repeating an erroneous argument doesn’t make it correct. Even if you say it three times.

You appear to be switching between truths in a world and truths at a world — Michael

Well, yeah. Even Leon has to be able to say there is no gold at a world with no language, while presumably maintaining that there is gold, somehow, in order to even set out his proposal. So that's not problematic, surely. We are using a Tarskian semantics, after all. What else is there.

1. If the King of France is bald then the King of France exists — Michael

I don't see how introducing such dubious stuff helps. As you say, the truth functionality of "The king of France is bald" is contentious. The set of present Kings of France is empty. "The gold in those hills" is not empty.

If there are no descriptions then there is no X such that X is true/false... But the mountain still exists even if it isn't painted or described. — Michael

C3. Therefore, if the sentence "there is gold in those hills" does not exist then there is no gold in those hills. — Michael

There is at that world no sentence "there is gold in those hills" that is either true or false; and yet there is still gold in those hills. Hence it is truth that there is gold in those hills, and that the sentence "there is gold in those hills" is true.

We cannot step outside language, of course. So there is something amiss with

P2. If the sentence "there is gold in those hills" is true then the sentence "there is gold in those hills" exists. — Michael

The nature of this oddity is that the sentence (proposition may be a better choice here) is not one of the things in the world, but a construct from those things. This is shown by the substitutional interpretation, but hidden by interpretations that treat sentences as what we might loosely call something like "substantial" things such as hills and gold...

In a second-order logic sentences such as f(a) and ∃(x)f(x) are not in the domain.

But C3 treats the sentence "there is gold in those hills" as if it were an item in the domain.

But it is an interesting argument, much more so than the hand-waving that makes up so much of this thread. The issue here is how to talk consistently about realism and antirealism and what you have said is on topic.

As if things only exist once named.

...you are not using the word "truth" to refer to the property that truth-bearers have, but something else. — Michael

Yep. The gold and the hills and such.

That was the bit from my last few posts about the difference between a quantificational and a substitutional interpretation, and about sentences being of a different logical order to the individuals in the domain:

All three of the following have the very same truth value:
"There is gold in those hills" has the property of "truth"
"There is gold in those hills" is true
There is gold in those hills — Banno

Perhaps we should revisit, and be explicit, as to what is being claimed. I take it we agree that there are not sentences without language. Are you also claiming that there is no gold without language? I think there is gold without language.

It can be the case that there is gold in those hills and yet not be any sentences that say "There is gold in those hills" or that '"There is gold in those hills" has the property of "truth"'.

I understand you to be claiming that this is not so.

Have I understood you correctly?

Edit:

I'm saying that a truth is something like a correct description, that a falsehood is something like "an incorrect description", that descriptions didn't exist 50 million years ago, and so that neither truths nor falsehoods existed 50 million years ago. — Michael

Ok. But were there things that were true? Was there gold in those hills?

Most gold deposits in Australia formed around 400 million years ago. (Is that, for you, a truth? or is it just true, without being a truth? Or is it that there was gold in those hills 50 million years ago, but it's not true that there was gold in those hills 50 million years ago?)

There is still a thriving school of idealist-leaning physicists among other schools of thought. — Wayfarer

Hmmm.

I feel like every new discovery in the field gets muddled by thousands of people who try to run away with it and draw conclusions that it's not saying. — Darkneos

Yep.

Son: I think so. Certainly happier than you in your passive-aggressive and destructive marriage. :wink: — Tom Storm

:wink:

Where did the cocaine come in to the conversation? I thought they were talking about prostitution...

But when a few drugs were decriminalised in Canberra a year ago, it was predicted to be the begining of the end.... It wasn't.

An prostitution has long been legal here.

How can an abstract object have the property of truth? — Michael

Becasue that's what we do with sentences such as those...

Sometimes we use those sentences as if they set out what is the case, and call them true. Sometimes, we use them to set out what is not the case, and call them false...

It's not so much that one can prove that sentences are the sort of thing that is true or false, as deciding that being true or false is the sort of thing that sentences - statements in particular - are able to do. Or, more accurately, as deciding that statements are the sort of thing we can treat as being true or false. — Banno

This by way of reiterating 's comments.

"Truth is a property of truth-bearers" hides what is going on by implicitly adopting a quantificational interpretation. The picture it presents is of the sentence "There is gold in those hills" having the property of "truth", as Michael suggests. The structure uses a new entity, the sentence "There is gold in those hills", and in so-doing it confuses folk into looking around for this new abstraction. It misleads Michael to think that truths only exist when sentences exist.

But saying that <"There is gold in those hills" has the property of "truth"> is just a way of saying that there is gold in those hills. And "just" here is the same as "is no more than". This is the substitution interpretation.

All three of the following have the very same truth value:

• "There is gold in those hills" has the property of "truth"
• "There is gold in those hills" is true
• There is gold in those hills

It is muddled to think that the first and the second require the existence of something in addition to gold and hills - namely the sentence "There is gold in those hills". Language is bewitching. All three are just different ways of talking about gold and hills.

Of course, we can talk as if there are things called sentences, and do some interesting things with them. But we must keep in mind that sentences are in very important ways different to things such as hills and gold.

This is why

P2. If the sentence "there is gold in those hills" is true then the sentence "there is gold in those hills" exists. — Michael

is problematic. It seems to imply that the sentence is at the same level as the gold and the hills. It isn't. The sentence is a logical order above the hills and the gold.



And yes, Michael doesn't understand the difficulty I'm having with the English-language argument. But there it is.

I really don't understand the difficulty you're having with the English-language argument — Michael

Yep. I can see that.

Well, its a complex, multifaceted issue. A close approximation might be that being true is something we do with utterances, rather than saying that some utterances are true. It's not the noise or the marks that are true, after all - utterances are only true if a whole lot of other stuff is included. There's a tendency to try to make a messy process much neater, but the mess is perhaps ineliminable.

Indeed. It's not at all clear what a sentence is - what counts as a sentence for the purposes of this discussion?

All this ambiguity...

Davidson reduced language to first-order extensional prediction, removing much of the peripheral stuff. But of course that brought another set of problems. Despite that his approach has much to recommend it, by way of clarifying some issues.

Well, yes. But is the set of all possible sentences different to the set of all sentences?

And of course the issues around sets of sets are problematic.

I don't why you're making this so complicated. — frank

:wink:

Another contributor compared @Michael to a small dog who refuses to let go of a big bone. One admires his tenacity, but wonders as to the point.

Michael's argument talks about the existence of sentences. Hence it make use of quantification in a second-order language - a language about language. In a first-order language we can make the an inference by quantifying over a predication - from f(a) to ∃(x)f(x). In second order logic one might perform a similar operation over a group of predicates. If we have ϕ(f(a)), we can infer ∃Pϕ(P) - if f(a) is ϕ, then something (P, in this case) is ϕ. But at issue here is a choice in how this is to be understood. Is it about just the things (a,b,c...) that make up the domain of the logic, or does it bring something new, P, into the ontology? The first is the substitutional interpretation, the second is the quantificational interpretation. This second interpretation has Platonic overtones, since it seems to invoke the existence of a certain sort of abstract "thing".

Sorry for the formal stuff. More casually, when we move from talking about things to talking about sentences about things, it can feel like we have added something more to the set of "what there is to talk about" - that sentences about things are also things... And hence to the illusion of some sort of abstract doohickies. The quantificational interpretation.

Alternately our talk of sentences is still just talk about the individuals around us. The substitutional interpretation.

Michael's position relies on the quantificational interpretation.

There's nothing amiss with that per se. The quantificational interpretation works well in mathematics. But at stake here is if it works well for talk of things being true.

Extensionally, a sentence is true if it satisfied the model we are considering. But how this all pans out in @Michael's argument is far from clear. He seems to be interpreting sentences quantificational, so that he can say they exist, while at the same time insisting that they are substitutional - what he says

2. Truth-bearers are features of language, not mind-independent abstract objects — Michael

This might lie parallel with the questions you have been asking Michael.

Here's an example. "Michael is courageous" is a first-order predication, talking about Michael. "Courage is a virtue" is a second-order predication, about courage. Now is "Courage is a virtue" a round-about way of talking about Michael, as the substitution interpretation would have it? Just a way of saying that Michael has a virtue? Or does it bring into existence a new "abstract" individual, "Courage", as the quantificational interpretation might imply?

And again, to my eye these are things of little significance. Just different ways of talking.

You don't know what it means for a painting to exist? — Michael

I don't think it is as clear as you suppose. Does that painting of the reconstruction Jesus's face exist? No, it's not a painting, it's digital. We do have a fairly clear understanding of what existential quantification is in an extensional context. But that is not how you seem to be using

the sentence "there is gold in those hills" exists. — Michael

Again, that there is such a sentence in the domain of sentences is true, but not enough to carry your argument. The conclusion just becomes an example of "if P &~P then Q" - asserting that a sentence that is in the domain of sentences is not in the domain of sentences, implies anything.

And you will not agree with this analysis. Fair enough. I'll leave you to it.

Because if the woman does not have red hair then the painting is inaccurate. — Michael

So the argument treats accuracy as all-or-nothing. One could not have an otherwise accurate painting in which the hair was pink when it ought be black. "Accurate" is somewhat problematic in this regard.

Google "accurate painting" and the response includes many inaccurate pictures of Jesus.





https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a41336100/real-jesus-face/

I don't see as the change makes the argument clearer.

P1. The painting of the woman with red hair is accurate if and only if the woman has red hair — Michael

Why IFF? Why not "The painting is accurate if the woman has red hair"? But this is a small thing. I think that you are right to say to that 'it’s not at all clear what you mean by saying “truth exists”'...and add that this applies to your argument as well.

It may well be that the most appropriate semantics will declare, say, that some sentences with non-referring names are neither true nor false. I don’t think of this as a deep metaphysical issue, but as a matter for semantic engineering.

This is pretty much what I have set out above. thanks for the quote.

What I’ve been trying to explain is that it’s not at all clear what you mean by saying “truth exists” given that truth is a property of sentences. — Michael

My quibble with the argument you gave earlier is much the same.

I'll add this.

Suppose you are right and truth disappears along with all life. Then, falsehood disappears along with truth. If you can't claim that there is gold in Boorara, nor can you claim that there is no gold in Boorara. If you were correct, you are not telling us about the state of the world without life, but suggesting that there is no such world. You are in the pseudo-Kantian position of telling us yet again about the ineffable. You are talking about that about which we cannot talk. That's the nonsense position found in Antigonish. If you can't say that it is true that there is gold in Boorara, it's becasue you have stepped outside of language, in which case you cannot say anything.

But what can we say? Well, if all life disappears, and nothing else changes, there will still be gold. Becasue gold is not alive.

Cheers.

Notice the bit where we can chose between realism and antirealsim? That's my suggestion for the answer to the OP. That the choice between realism and antirealism is a choice about how we talk about stuff, not a debate about metaphysical actualities.

Then I'll say a sentence is true when it corresponds to the facts. And I don't mean anything special by that. — Srap Tasmaner

The trouble is the baggage that goes along with "corresponds". I'll agree with you, provided that "corresponds" doesn't add any more than the truth-functionality found in a T-sentence.

It turns into this: If minds (or else truth-bearers) do not exist, does truth exist? The idea is that the state of affairs is left intact. The focus is on the mind or truth-bearer. You yourself hone in on this exact same thing: — Leontiskos

You misinterpret what is being said, still.

It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara. If everything else stays the same, then by that very stipulation, there will still be gold in Boorara. Read that bit, without the "mind" stuff you add on, and tell us if it is correct or not.

My guess is that you will reply that you cannot seperate the mind from the gold. That's a personal foible of yours. If you read the supposition - which is not mine, but was provided by @Wayfarer - it is clear that, that there is gold does not change if life disappears. There are no sentences, but there is still gold.

I'm curious whether you have anything to say about these entities. — Srap Tasmaner

I do.

There are a few things that are not physical, but are constructed by our talk. Money is a good example, especially now that it is found in accounts rather than pockets. Those accounts are themselves not something to be found on the shelf at a bank. Indeed the bank will still be there if you burn the building down, as will the debt.

We just allow some things to "count as" money, an account, or a bank. We can similarly allow a piece of land to count as a piece of property, or bring a marriage into existence by going through a ceremony, or by simply acting as if it is so. The range and variety of tings that we "bring into existence", effectively by acts of fiat, is enormous.

When we do these things we do them in more or less consistent ways. We place limits on somethings - the money that goes in to your account is supposed to equal the money that comes out; the bishop is supposed to stay on it's own colour.

Sentences are a form of "counts as", too. Some of them count as setting out what is the case. Some, as what might be the case. Some as what is not the case. Some as what we want to be the case. Some as inducement to make something the case. Some as making something the case.

All of this is just stuff we do with words, in the world.

In amongst these "counts as" items as some sentences that count as setting out what is the case. Of course, that "setting out" is something we do with the sentence, not something the sentence does by itself.

Sometimes we use those sentences as if they have set out what is the case, and call them true. Sometimes, we use them to set out what is not the case, and call them false. Sometimes, we act as realists, and say that sentences must be either true, or they are false, with nothing in between. Sometimes we act as antirealists, and allow situations where sentences are not either true or false, but take on other values. We have ways of making such situations more or less coherent, if not consistent.

Which way we should act - realist or antirealist - is sometimes an issue of contention. Sometimes an issue of convention. But always an issue of what "counts as".

It's not so much that one can prove that sentences are the sort of thing that is true or false, as deciding that being true or false is the sort of thing that sentences - statements in particular - are able to do. Or, more accurately, as deciding that statements are the sort of thing we can treat as being true or false.

That's the "metaphysical status of truth bearers", . We don't discover that a sentence is a truth bearer so much as assign it to that role. There's no esoteric metaphysics here. It's just what we do with words.

, for you, too.

The takeaway is that you can't trust the answers give - they need independent evaluation.

Rendering it deceptive.

Sure, all that. "...is true" is predicated to sentences, in a context that gives that sentece an interpretation. But the interpretation is not part of the syntax, it's part of the semantics.

Perhaps that's the issue - the difference between being a predicate and being a property. Would you have been happy if Michael had instead said "Truth is a predicate of sentences"? Calling it a property has implications of hypostatisation? Incipient Platonism?

The what did you mean with the following?

Is it? Shouldn't it at the very least be a property of a pair <sentence, interpretation>? (Or a triple that includes as well a world.) — Srap Tasmaner

We use "true" as a predicate for sentences, propositions, and so on. The interpretation is not a part of the sentence, so much as something we can do with the sentence. Was that your point? That a sentence is true only under some interpretation? If so, then sure, but it is the sentence that is true or false, not the interpretation. An interpretation does not have a truth value.

"greater than 3" isn't. Any relation can be reinterpreted as a single-place predication.

The picture theory of meaning? Do you really want to invoke that?

The left side of a T-sentence is about the sentence. The right side is about how things are. <"The cat is on the mat" is true> is about the sentence "The cat is on the mat". <The cat is on the mat> is about the cat , not about the sentence "The cat is on the mat", and not about any picture of it raining, mental or otherwise.

<"The cat is on the mat" is true> has the form f(a), were "f" is "is true" and "a" is "The cat is on the mat". A single-place predication. Relations have the form f(a,b). Truth is not a relation.

Shouldn't it at the very least be a property of a pair <sentence, interpretation>? — Srap Tasmaner

Well, no. The interpretation is not a part of the sentence. In formal systems the domain is not a part of the sentence, but is part of the way the sentence is used - it's in the semantics, not the syntax. The interpretation assigns elements of the domain to the various variables. "The cat is on the mat" is true only if the cat is one of the things that is on the mat. The domain and interpretation are not part of the true sentence but part of the language in which the sentence occurs, or better, the use to which it is put. That use is what "binds" the cat to "the cat". There is no need here for a picture-of-cat that sits between the cat and "the cat".